Evan G. Galbraith Quotes

Foreign policy is the most constraining form of policy-making

Never for a moment, have the responsible and instructed statesmen in charge of the foreign affairs of the United States failed to consider themselves bound to insist upon this policy .... Almost every President and Secretary of State has re-stated the doctrine with vigor and emphasis in the discussion of the diplomatic affairs of his day.

There are legitimate, even powerful arguments, to be made against the Bush administration's foreign policy. But those arguments are complicated, hard to explain, and, in the end, not all that sensational.

In these days of intimate relations, of economic stress and of intense desire to protect national interests and advance national opportunity, the treatment of questions which, from a legal standpoint, are domestic, often seriously affects international relations. The principle, each nation for itself to the full extent of its powers, is the principle of war, not of peace.

Ninety percent of foreign policy is reacting to whatever's happening out there.

Congress cannot and should not run foreign policy.

It is the President alone who must make the major decisions of our foreign policy.

You cannot have individual foreign policy. You cannot have celebrity foreign policy.

People tend to leave foreign affairs to governments because they think the leaders of government have all the information and know better.

U. S. Foreign Policy is usually largely reactive.

People think that it only takes an American decision to solve this or that problem [in foreign affairs].

Foreign policy is important.

Like other countries in the world, China must uphold its own sovereignty, territorial integrity and development interests. At the same time, we are willing to properly handle differences and disagreements in state-to-state relations.

American foreign policy, for all its shortcomings, has underpinned political stability around the world.

International institutions are composed of governments. Governments control their own military forces and police.

So I think that our foreign policy, the president's strong and principled leadership when it comes to the war against terror and foreign policy is going to be an asset.

Foreign policy is really domestic policy with its hat on.

The principles that should guide American foreign policy are simple: the world is safer when America leads, only strength ensures peace and freedom, and America must stand with its allies and challenge its adversaries.

Foreign policy is effectively the assertion of many individual countries intersecting on the global marketplace. And you have to figure out how to get your interest served in a way that meets the interests and needs of these other folks.

The next president needs to know foreign policy and not learn it on the job.

Nothing in the constitutions of Western states requires them to get involved in every foreign conflict.

Every nation whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of its wiser neighbors.

Every government is in some respects a problem for every other government.

Governments interfere in the affairs of each other, when they conceive their own peace is endangered.

World politics is not a kindergarten.